Too Late to Die Young

f the prerogatives of a democratically elected or militarily established government can be discerned in its early days—that critical moment when those matters deemed most pressing are promptly and swiftly dealt with—then the intentions of the 1973 military junta in Chile were made amply apparent by its first initiative: the systematic rounding up and slaughter of thousands of leftists. On September 12, 1973, the day after the military and national police ousted the country’s socialist president Salvador Allende in a CIA-backed coup, activist, pedagogue, and folk singer Victor Jara was arrested at Santiago’s State Technical University and taken to nearby Chile Stadium, where he was tortured (all of his fingers were severed), ridiculed (soldiers taunted him that, now, he’d never